They say necessity is the mother of invention, and a night out on the town in New York City hatched an amazing idea - “Why isn’t there a Chicken and Rice truck in Boston?!”

From there, Chicken and Rice Guys was born.

Since July 2011, the team has expanded to three food trucks, a thriving corporate catering business, and future plans for their first restaurant. Their goal is to be the next fast casual chain that serves delicious food, provides great service, and gives back to the community.

High Stakes in Tiny Spaces

Food trucks are in a unique position that most businesses don’t experience. They do all of their business from a moving object, a truck, that is no bigger than a tiny room and is removed from their “base station” or main kitchen.

The space they interact with through is a small window. All of their business is done within a two hour time period, the lunch rush, between the hours of 11 and 1. If anything goes wrong during a single shift, that can ruin an entire day of business.

So quickly realized this and began to appreciate the necessity for organization. Typical paper checklists for shifts were a good start, but there was no mechanism for accountability or remotely managing the process in real time. Given the business model, real-time was key.

Squadle Checklists

Chicken and Rice Guys began using Squadle in the spring of 2014. They have three checklists - one for checking into a shift, one for checking out, and one for compliance. Ian regularly checks if managers fill them out, holding his team accountable.

"We’re not having to make as many trips to get things that are missing if we forget them.” says So. “If we forget an ingredient and can’t make rice, and we’re down for even just 15 minutes, that could kill a shift for us. Before, we were tracking all of this stuff in our heads. It’s much more organized now with Squadle.”

Squadle and Square

With only two hours to make an entire days’ worth of business, every second counts. So recognized that they were losing time switching between devices checking Squadle and Square. Using a custom integration, he now is able to use the Square credit card reader on the Squadle Hub and seamlessly transition from customer conversations to employee management.

Looking Ahead

As Chicken and Rice Guys continues to expand the number of trucks they use and thinks about opening a restaurant, consistency and great management will be key to scaling. Putting the Squadle system in place at this critical inflection point was a strategic move that So and his colleagues are optimistic about.